As Seen By Me

hing is so strange and curious here. The churches, the chimes, the palace, the co

ip one. They are almost as magnificent as those in St. Petersburg, and they impre

Bazaar," and they call their smartest restaurant "The Hermitage." I felt as if I could b

n our rooms, which made restful corner ornaments with dignified festoons, which swung slowly to and fro with such fascinating solemnity that I could not leave off looking at them. The hotel is built up hill and down dale, and each corridor smells more musty than the other. It has a curious arrangement for supplying wa

y piano works hard, so I bent all my strength to this one, and lo! from that impudent dragon's mouth I got a mighty stream of water straight in my unconscious face, and enough to put out a fire. I fell back with a shriek of astonishment an

box of sand. I tried to use it, but my hand was not very steady,

received from the most delightful people that it ever was my good fortune to meet, and

ly exciting function of similar importance. The French are great sticklers for etiquette, but they are more spontaneous, and you are asked to dine at once. After that it is your own fault if you are not asked again. But in Russia it is different. I think that the men must have accompanied my messenger home, and the women

th her sledge in the morning, and kept us with her all day long, taking us to see the most interesting people and places in Moscow. She showed us the coronation-robes, the embroideries upon which were from her own beautiful designs. The Empress presented her with an eme

plished woman. Her house, we were told, De Lesseps, the father of the Suez

o back to the seat of her sledge, and her horses were rather fiery and unmanageable, every time they halted without warning this solemn flunky pitche

torical value as her collection of all the provincial costumes of the peasants of Finland and Big and Little Russia. In addition to these she has the fête-day toilets as well. The Kokoshniks are all e

uments of her country. There is a museum there, with a complete set of all these co

ten greatest museums in the world. The Hermitage in St. Petersburg is to have one, the British Museum another, and so on. Only one was to go to America, and to my metropolitan dismay I found that it was not to go to Chicago. I shall not say where it was intended to go; I shall only say that with characteristic modesty I asked, in my most timid voice, why she did not present it to a museum in the city which she had alre

they are made to change their clothes twice a day. They have a magnificent orchestrion instead of an orchestra here, and I could scarcely eat those beautiful dinners for listening to the music. We became so well acquainted with the répertoire that our friends, knowing our taste, ordered the music to match the courses. So instead of sherry with the soup, they ordered the

er for an act of bravery which well deserved it. He was in charge of the powder-magazines just outside of

le city would be endangered; so without a second's hesitation he and his men sprang into the fire and literally trod it out with their feet, running the risk of an explosion by concussion, as well as by a spark of fire. It was a superb act of coura

sian winter, for, strange to say, although so much farther sou

ame down from St. Petersburg at night, so we abandoned the courier train, and took the s

train became bitterly cold, and we came near freezing and starving to death. That made our Russian experiences quite complete. We had foolishly started without even fruit, and there was nothing to be had on board t

o lunch or quoting Scripture we could never tell. There was no one on the train who spoke English or French, and nobody else in our car to speak anything at all-owing to our having come on this particular train, in order for my companion to "see Russia." I am d

most charming men I ever met, we both cried with relief at the sight of a friendly face and some one to whom we could speak and tell our woes. I have since wondered what he thought to be

rench, it could not be more utterly beautiful. The domes of the cathedrals are blue, studded with gold stars; or else pale green or all gold, and the most exquisite churches in all Russia are in Kiev. A terrible monastery, where you take candles and go down into the bowels of the earth to see where monks martyred themselves, is here; and poor simple-mind

it sounded to hear "To be or not to be" in Russian! The acting was so familiar, the words so strange. The audience went crazy over him

r have seen. It is a sort of candied rose. The whole rose is there. It is a soli

, but it is the sort of beauty that you can't describe satisfactorily. It is like your mother's face. Yo

commercial, and not beautiful, but, as usual, our Russian friends made us forget t

d in Russia that I was determined to go if possible. So I took an interpreter and drove to the police headquarters myself. To my amazement and delight my man told me that it could all be arranged by the payment of

with the stewardess a Greek named Aspasia, and I persisted

rbor through the ice into the Black Se